Sometimes you may receive the below error , when you try to access the Mailbox features for a Mailbox via ECP.

In this situation the Exchange server version is 2016 and it happened only on a single mailbox. After several hours of troubleshooting we came to know that , this could happen if the mailbox is in quarantined state. During this problem user will not be able to access his mailbox neither by Outlook nor any clients)(You could refer https://www.nucleustechnologies.com/blog/how-to-fix-exchange-mailbox-quarantine-issue/ to have an idea about possible causes for a mailbox to go in to quarantined mode).

To confirm this we ran the below command via the Exchange Powershell

Get-Mailboxstatistics -identity “Test User” | fl Isquarantined

The output was True , now we could confirm his mailbox is in quarantined state.

To disable the quarantine state we ran the below command:

Disable-MailboxQuarantine “Test User”

But , for us unfortunately , the user mailbox goes again to quarantine mode after few minutes. Thus we tried to repair the mailbox using the below command.:

In our situation even the repair was not solving the issue and we had to recreate the mailbox. The reason , I shared the above steps as it could help somebody , without the need for recreating the mailbox.

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Choosing the right authentication method , during the new implementation of Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure or Migrating an existing On-Premise towards Cloud with the intention to have a Hybrid Solution is really mandatory as it will help to avoid any disruptive situations. It has to be a well informed plan and execution process. The decision should be made only on valid compelling reasons. However, Microsoft have published an article in this regard and it can be accessed via https://aka.ms/auth-options.

I would recommend to refer this article as it could be an handy guide to guide the customers and other stakeholders during a project.

It covers detailed steps on how to enable the Group Policy for auditing and enabling Folder level Auditing parameters. However after enabling the required configuration you need to filter out for the event ID’s 4663,4624,5140, and 4660 in the Security Event Log.

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I have wrote a seperate blog post on how to configure spamassassin ,spamass-milter & sendmail to combat SPAM. But this article focus on how to reject emails that are tagged as SPAM by spamassassin. By default the emails will not be rejected , and it will be delivered to the MTA as it is.

In order to achieve this , you need to modify the spamass-milter configuration file in /etc/sysconfig/spamass-milter , and uncomment the line

EXTRA_FLAGS=”-m -r 15″

and modify the -r value to based on your needs, and leave the -m as it is, this will prevent the spamass-milter modifying the header. In my case I have set the -r value to 5 . Do not forget to restart the spamassassin , spamass-milter & sendmail services.

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When there is less free space on the System Reserved Partition , the VEEAM backup jobs will fail(Only when the Guest Processing is enabled). There are so many articles , you could use to solve this issues at the Microsoft Operating System level , leveraging Native MS Tools or some 3rd Party Disk Management Tools.

On the other hand , you could use VMware VCenter Converter to increase the System reserved Partition , by using the “Convert VM” option. To do so , during the Wizard , when you reach the last screen

Select “Data to Copy”

Then Choose “Select Volumes to Copy” in Data Copy Type.

Select the System Reserved Partition and then choose “Type size in GB” and enter the desired value.

That’s it once the VM is converted , the System reserved partition will be expanded. Now you could happily backup the VM’s using the VEEAM B&R.

Update1:

Even after the above procedure we still had the same issue . However , we were able to identify the root cause and fix it permanently with the help of VEEAM support.

Cause: Even though we increase the system reserved partition size , under System reserved partition properties (in Disk Management , Right Click on System reserved partition and select Properties) we were able to see that, the maximum limit has not been updated in the Shadow copies Tab , and it was showing the old value only.

Resolution : When we changed the settings to No Limit , voila the backup started working fine.

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Problem: The VM’s getting hanged / frozen. Cannot Login to Windows nor issue any Power off commands. During the investigation , we found out that the VM’s were recording Event ID 129 with the Warning message “Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued” , just before the VM becoming unresponsive.

We were referring the VMware KB https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2063346 , and confirmed the LSI_SAS driver is updated to the latest version. But , luckily in our case , this deployment was a temporary one as we are planning to move this VM’s to a stable VSphere Cluster running on Nutanix. After few days ,moving the VM’s to the Nutanix environment , we noticed that the VM’s were functioning well with out any issues.

So for those who are having a similar issue , you need to check the underlying storage structure . As it could cause similar issues like this.

NOTE: During this unresponsive state , you could notice the Disk Latency stays at more than 20. This definitely a problem for a VM’s responsiveness.

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As part of the Nutanix best practices we need to enable the EVC on the VSphere Cluster. In that sense , when the VCenter Server it self a VM , you will be dragged in to a chicken and egg situation. Because , when a host contains powered on VM , you will not be able to add the host to the EVC enabled Cluster. Thus , to overcome this condition , you could follow the below guidelines. (You may need to disable the Admission Control temporarily and enable it again until you finish all the steps)

1) Add the hosts to the DataCenter .

2) Create the HA / DRS Cluster .

3) Enable EVC on the cluster based on your processor architecture.

4) Pick up any host and shutdown the running VM’s and the CVM ( Please keep in mind , you can shutdown only one CVM at a time).

5) Then drag & drop the host to the Cluster , the host will be added to the cluster without any hassle.

6) Power on the VM’s and the CVM ( wait till the CVM completes the boot)

7) Now , VMotion the VCenter VM to the host which is part of the Cluster already.

8) That’s it repeat steps 4 ,5 & 6 for the remaining hosts.

Hint:

# In case if you have forgotten to enable EVC before you put the Cluster in to production , and now you are in a situation , that you need to expand your Nutanix Cluster and enabling EVC becomes mandatory to add the new nodes to the existing ESXi cluster.In this case , you could do the additional steps given below to achieve the intended result. ( Again , you may need to disable the Admission Control temporarily and enable it again until you finish all the steps)

1) Create a new Cluster (without EVC)

2) Select a host and VMotion all the Production VM’s running on that host to other remaining hosts.